Sonal Pandya
Mumbai, 17 Dec 2021 12:24 IST
The courtroom drama, written and directed by Manish Gupta, starts strongly but peters out to a predictable finish.
Ordinary chartered accountant Bansi Keswani (Vinay Pathak) finds the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on his doorstep one day as part of a larger investigation. While he is able to save himself from the CBI, he lands back in hot water in a different legal mess.
Writer-director Manish Gupta’s courtroom drama 420 IPC (2021) starts strongly but peters out to a predictable finish. After being introduced to the mild-mannered, middle-class Keswani, the feature zeroes in on his ambitious young lawyer Birbal Chaudhary (Rohan Vinod Mehra) who is willing to try anything to win.
Set in the timeline of June–August 2015, the legal saga moves from Keswani’s alleged involvement in the MMRDA scam of siphoning of government funds to another problem when he is accused of stealing cheques from his client, builder Neeraj Sinha (Arif Zakaria). Gupta builds the suspense nicely, with clues placed throughout the film leading to the several suspects.
Are Keswani and his wife Pooja (Gul Panag), who are already in debt and on the verge of being evicted, hiding something? Or is Sinha framing the poor CA to lead suspicion away from him in another matter? The first half presents evidence both ways, as Birbal battles with experienced public prosecutor Savak Jamshedji (Ranvir Shorey) who believes Keswani is guilty.
The rookie Birbal even tries some underhand methods that backfire on him, until he enlists the help of police officer Manali (Vidhi Chitalia) who gathers some valuable information. The youngster’s aim is to get Keswani off the hook, no matter what. Along the way, he uncovers some pretty shocking discoveries.
420 IPC is an interesting drama for much of the first half and when Birbal decides to get more proactive, one can guess where this is heading. After the success of Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020), more such stories were to follow. Only here, once Pathak’s Keswani is arrested by the police, he slowly fades into the background.
Moving into the court, we toggle between the arguments of Chaudhary and Jamshedji and the pronouncements of judge Rustom Mistry (Sanjay Gurbaxani). These scenes are compelling and interesting; though Birbal’s amateurish attempts at detective work have a 50-50 chance of panning out.
Gupta has assembled a solid ensemble cast of veterans from Pathak, Shorey and Panag to Zakaria who all enact their roles effortlessly. But their characters (and their screentime) sometimes take a back seat to Birbal and his quest to win. In only his second film role, Mehra seems a tad more confident but still can’t shake off that posh accent in certain scenes.
The feature does a decent job of playing with ambiguity about different characters’ guilt and making the story about the small fry that sometimes get caught in the net. However, as we have seen in countless other films and series, there is no big build-up or ‘aha!’ moment in court, as the film’s finale seems matter-of-fact. This might have been the makers’ way of going more towards reality, but 420 IPC needed a little more drama in its final minutes.
420 IPC is now available on Zee5.